Mining and Oil Sector Image – Page 19

MINING WATCH NEWS RELEASE: Northern Ontario First Nation Calls On McGuinty to Stop Mining Activity on Sacred Burial Sites

October 3, 2011

For more information go to: www.kitchenuhmaykoosib.com/landsandenvironment/

Sep 27, 2011

Source: Kitchenuhmaykoosib Inninuwug (KI) First Nation

Ontario’s inaction violates freedom of religion; threatens to spark new conflict

Kitchenuhmaykoosib Inninuwug (KI) — KI Chief Donny Morris is urgently calling on Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty to intervene to stop mining exploration activity on a sacred KI ancestral burial site. Mining exploration company God’s Lake Resources has staked new claims in violation of KI’s well publicized moratorium and has worked the site in spite of being informed that multiple sacred KI graves are within the claim area. Government officials say that they are powerless to stop God’s Lake from working their claims in spite of KI’s Indigenous Title, Rights, and sensitive spiritual connection to the area. This growing conflict closely mirrors the events that led to the jailing of Chief Morris and five other KI leaders in 2008 for refusing to allow platinum mining exploration on their homeland.

“Our ancestors deserve a place where they can rest undisturbed. People everywhere understand that cemeteries are sacred places. But in Sherman Lake, they want to put a gold mine on one,” said Chief Morris.

Can’t wait forever (New KI mining conflict) – Thunder Bay Chronicle-Journal Editorial (October 2, 2011)

October 3, 2011

The Thunder Bay Chronicle-Journal is the daily newspaper of Northwestern Ontario.

Kitchenuhmaykoosib Inninuwug (KI) First Nation has a reputation for making demands. But what does it want?

KI, formerly called Big Trout Lake, insists it wants to share in a resurgent mining boom in the Far North, but on its own terms. So far, those terms remain elusive.

Miners and First Nations need to negotiate terms acceptable to both, with oversight by the province which is responsible for mining and Crown land. Such talks have led to several successful partnerships here in the North but other relations are strained or broken.

KI forced mining exploration company Platinex to cease operations 60 kilometres from the community over allegations the band had not been properly consulted or respected concerning its traditional territory. In 2009 the province agreed to pay $5 million to Platinex to give up its mining claims. The signal to the mining industry was clear; the loss of jobs and revenue to KI, incalculable.

Sarnia rallies against asbestos – Katie Daubs (Toronto star – October 1, 2011)

October 1, 2011

The Toronto Star, has the largest circulation in Canada. The paper has an enormous impact on federal and Ontario politics as well as shaping public opinion.

SARNIA—Chantale De Paepe is getting married this Saturday. Her day is packed with hair, makeup, and a memorial asbestos walk. Her dad, Vince, died of mesothelioma this summer.

“Here in Toronto, people are like, ‘What’s that? I’ve never heard of it,” the 28-year-old said. But the rare form of cancer is well known in Sarnia, where De Paepe is from.

For decades, the small city has been synonymous with chemical production and oil refineries, with a concentration of companies doing business in an area dubbed “Chemical Valley” by locals. In the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s, the pipes that snaked through the valley were insulated with asbestos.

In the last decade, an alarming number of men and women in the area have died of asbestos-related cancers, which have latency periods of 20 to 40 years. Since 1999, 105 people with mesothelioma have come through the local Occupational Health Clinic for Ontario Workers. Only two are still alive.

Saudi oil’s Ethical Warfare – by Claudia Cattaneo (National Post – September 21, 2011)

September 30, 2011

The National Post is Canada’s second largest national paper

CALGARY . Is Saudi Arabia losing its cool over Canada’s growing oil sands? It certainly seems that way, based on the Middle East kingdom’s bizarre overreaction to television commercials that promote Canada’s “ethical oil,” in contrast to oil coming from Saudi Arabia, a regime that oppresses women.

The commercials are sponsored by a tiny grassroots organization based in Toronto, EthicalOil.org, which encourages consumers to favour “ethical” oil from Canada over “conflict” oil that comes from undemocratic regimes, where most of the world’s oil reserves are located.

EthicalOil.org ran the commercials on the Oprah Winfrey Network in Canada in late August. The Saudis responded by hiring lawyers to tell the Television Bureau of Canada, the advertising review and clearance service funded by Canada’s private broadcasters, to withdraw approval of the ads.

The group was so outraged by the Saudis’ “intimidation tactics” it started running the commercials again this week on the Sun News Network and was planning to run them on CTV, until the network backed out, said Alykhan Velshi, executive director of EthicalOil.org.

Barrick Gold’s Tanzanian headache: Blood and Stone – by Geoffrey York (Globe and Mail – Report on Business Magazine – October, 2011)

September 29, 2011

The Globe and Mail is Canada’s national newspaper with the second largest broadsheet circulation in the country. It has enormous influence on Canada’s political and business elite.

Across the cavernous pits and the mountains of waste rock, the alarm wails eerily, warning that an explosion is imminent. Dozens of villagers gather silently at the edge of a pit, past the holes that have been torn in the fence, waiting for their chance.

Then comes the blast. As a plume of smoke curls into the sky, the scavengers scramble into the pit, eager to prise a living from the freshly smashed rock.

Suddenly the police appear, careering over the rocky road from another corner of the vast mine. The pickup truck full of armed men in green uniforms bounces across the wasteland like a scene from Mad Max. The truck hurtles toward the scavengers, but is halted by a boulder that they have pulled across its path. By the time the police can leap down and move the boulder, the scavengers have scattered into the nearby trees, where they wait for their next opportunity.

This is the daily ritual of conflict at the North Mara gold mine in Tanzania: Intrude and retreat, pursue and withdraw—punctuated by flare-ups that sometimes leave people dead.

For an eyewitness, it’s difficult to reconcile this cycle of violence with the avowed community-friendly policies of the mine’s parent company, Barrick Gold Corp. and the professed goal of its founder, Peter Munk, of making good corporate citizenship the “calling card that precedes us wherever we go.”

Giving asbestos new life – by Graeme Hamilton and Nicolas Van Praet (National Post – September 29, 2011)

September 29, 2011

The National Post is Canada’s second largest national paper

He has been portrayed as a monster, a businessman with impeccable political connections who sells a product so dangerous it has been banned in Europe and largely shunned on this continent.

But Baljit Singh Chadha says he is simply aiming to make some money while helping the poor improve their lives. And it looks like the Quebec government is about to back him up.

Mr. Chadha is a Montreal entrepreneur and the new face of the asbestos industry in Canada. After acting as the sales agent in India to Quebec’s Jeffrey asbestos mine for years, he has put together a plan to buy the bankrupt business and give it new life.

The Liberal government of Premier Jean Charest has committed $58-million in loan guarantees to relaunch the mine, provided Mr. Chadha can show the project can turn a profit, that the asbestos will be used safely in importing countries and that he can find private investors willing to put $25-million into the plan.

Shut down miner: KI [northern Ontario gold junior conflict] – by Bryan Meadows (Thunder Bay Chronicle-Journal – September 29, 2011)

September 29, 2011

The Thunder Bay Chronicle-Journal is the daily newspaper of Northwestern Ontario.

NORTHWEST BUREAU

The chief of Kitchenuhmaykoosib Inninuwug (KI) First Nation is calling on the province to stop a gold exploration company from working on a KI ancestral burial site.

“Our ancestors deserve a place where they can rest undisturbed,” Chief Donny Morris said Wednesday. “People everywhere understand that cemeteries are sacred places. But in Sherman Lake, they want to put a gold mine on one.”

The band claims that mining exploration company God’s Lake Resources has staked new claims despite KI’s well-publicized moratorium, and that the company has worked the site in spite of being informed that multiple grave sites are within the claim area.

Government officials have told the band that they are powerless to stop God’s Lake from working their claims in spite of bands indigenous title, and spiritual connection to the area. The growing conflict closely mirrors the events that led to the jailing of Morris and five other KI leaders in 2008 for refusing to allow platinum mining exploration on their homeland, the band says.

The next great pipeline debate – and U.S. funding – by Gary Mason (Globe and Mail – September 29, 2011)

September 30, 2011September 29, 2011

The Globe and Mail is Canada’s national newspaper with the second largest broadsheet circulation in the country. It has enormous influence on Canada’s political and business elite.

“In the past few years, the tenacious Vancouver-based and
independently financed writer [Vivian Krause] has parted
the curtains on the extent to which environmental groups
in Canada are funded by American organizations. (Her website,
fair-questions.com) … Ms. Krause estimates there’s $50-
million in American funding pouring into the Canadian
Environmental movement every year.” (Gary Mason)

The politics of oil is a grimy business. Look at what’s going on in the United States right now and you can see just how dirty things can get. Debate around the Keystone XL pipeline has been rancorous and divisive. In the end, concern for jobs is likely to trump worries over the pipeline’s environmental impact.

The movement against Keystone has mostly played itself out in America. But the next great pipeline debate will unfold right here in Canada. The stage is already being set.

National Geographic recently devoted a cover spread to the pending tussle over the proposed $5.5-billion, 1,700-kilometre Enbridge pipeline. It would run from Edmonton to the coastal port town of Kitimat, B.C., where, in theory, tankers bound for energy-thirsty markets in Asia would fill up with Alberta crude.

“Pipeline through paradise,” was the headline on the National Geographic story. In it, Ian McAllister, co-founder of the Canadian wilderness protection organization Pacific Wild, said Enbridge will precipitate the biggest environmental battle the country has ever witnessed. “It’s going to be a bare-knuckle fight.”

Extremists’ oil protest puzzling – by Ezra Levant (Toronto Sun – September 27, 2011)

September 30, 2011September 27, 2011

The Toronto Sun is the city’s daily tabloid newspaper.

On Monday, about 250 environmental extremists from across Canada and foreign countries travelled to Ottawa to protest oil. Plus a couple of dozen “journalists” from the CBC, there to cheer them on.

Greenpeace, the $350-million per year multinational corporation headquartered in Amsterdam, was one of the organizers. So was a group called U.K. Tarsands Network.

So, foreigners. Foreigners telling us what to do here in Canada — and boasting about trespassing in secure areas of Parliament Hill. Try that in Saudi Arabia. Or Iran. Try that in the United States, post-9/11.

These foreign meddlers pick on Canada precisely because we are the gentlest country in the world. And it would be too tough to try to protest in Iran or Saudi Arabia. The Saudi embassy is just a few blocks away from Parliament Hill, right on Sussex Dr. Saudi Arabia is the biggest oil producer in the world. They have the biggest oil reserves in the world. If this protest really was about oil, why didn’t they go there?

Ottawa’s ‘ethical’ oil-sands campaign heats up – by Campbell Clark and Nathan Vanderklippe (Globe and Mail – September 27, 2011)

September 30, 2011September 27, 2011

The Globe and Mail is Canada’s national newspaper with the second largest broadsheet circulation in the country. It has enormous influence on Canada’s political and business elite.

Ottawa and Lincoln, Neb.— A global battle over the reputation of Alberta’s oil sands is coming to a head. Ottawa is deploying heavy diplomatic guns, on both sides of the Atlantic, to the debate over whether it will be treated as an ethical source for a world that needs oil, or a polluting pariah.

Stephen Harper’s chummy relationship with British Prime Minister David Cameron has begun to yield a friendlier view toward the oil sands, a potential influence in the fight over European standards that could label Alberta oil dirty.

In North America, meanwhile, public protests and diplomatic lobbying are intensifying over the Keystone XL pipeline, which would carry oil sands bitumen deeper into the United States.

Canada’s ambassador to the U.S., Gary Doer, travelled Monday to meet the governor of Nebraska, where pipeline opponents are geared up for public meetings on Tuesday. In Ottawa, hundreds of activists converged on Parliament Hill for protests organized by environmentalists, unions and native leaders – before dozens climbed a barrier fence and were removed by police for trespassing.

While tactics shift, the debate has crystallized:

Yes, we have the $25-million,’ Quebec firm says of asbestos plan – by Julian Sher (Globe and Mail – September 27, 2011)

September 27, 2011

The Globe and Mail is Canada’s national newspaper with the second largest broadsheet circulation in the country. It has enormous influence on Canada’s political and business elite.

MONTREAL – A year ago, over a lunch of oysters and fine wine at a posh downtown restaurant, Baljit Chadha held himself out as the potential saviour of Quebec’s faltering asbestos industry. This week, he plans to deliver.

Days before a provincial government deadline this Saturday to find private funding for the Mine Jeffrey in Asbestos, Que., the wealthy and well-connected Montreal businessman says he has “letters of intent” from unnamed investors in three different countries – enough to breathe new life into an export trade critics decry for causing death.

“I have done a lot of soul-searching on this and have come to a conclusion that we are not exporting death,” said Mr. Chadha, who combines an almost evangelical fervour for asbestos with the clout needed to pull off his controversial plan.

Mr. Chadha, whose company already handled much of the mine’s asbestos sales to his native India, offered to buy the mine outright in August of 2010, for “tens of millions.” But to clinch the deal, he had to secure an additional $25-million from outside investors while the Quebec government kept the mine afloat with a $58-million loan guarantee.

“Yes we have the $25-million,” he told The Globe and Mail.

Going deeper underground [Guatemala mining conflicts] – by Lyndsie Bourgon (Corporate Knights Magazine – Fall, 2011)

September 27, 2011

Corporate Knights: The Magazine for Clean Capitalism is a quarterly Canadian magazine dedicated to the promotion of responsible business practices within Canada and the advancement of social and environmental sustainability worldwide. (wiki)

In Guatemala, victims of human rights abuses involving Canadian mining companies are left to pick up the pieces. At home in Canada, company lawyers skirt around questions of accountability, and justice ultimately falls through the cracks.

Gory Wanless sits at his desk in downtown Toronto, flipping through photo after photo of burning huts and maimed bodies. He points out where Adolfo Ich was hacked in the arm with a machete before being shot in the head, and where the home belonging to one of 11 women allegedly raped once stood in Lote Ocho, a small village in Guatemala.

Wanless, a lawyer at Klippensteins Barristers and Solicitors, is working on two cases that have implicated Canadian mining company HudBay Minerals Inc. and its subsidiary, HMI Nickel Inc., in serious human rights abuses in Guatemala. Both cases concern Guatemala’s CGN security forces, employed by HMI Nickel. In Choc v. HudBay, it’s alleged that security personnel shot and killed Adolfo Ich, a well-known Mayan Q’eqchi community organizer, in public and in broad daylight on September 27, 2009.

His wife, Angelica Choc, has brought a wrongful death case forward against HudBay. In the other lawsuit, Caal v. HudBay, it’s alleged that CGN employees, the Guatemalan army and police took part in the gang rape of 11 Mayan Q’eqchi women during the forceful eviction of their homes in Lote Ocho. The women are suing HudBay for negligence.

K.I. vs. Platinex: a ‘worst case’ example of community relations – Canadian Business Ethics Research Network

September 26, 2011September 22, 2011

The Canadian Business Ethics Research Network (CBERN) aims to promote knowledge-sharing and partnerships within the field of business ethics and across private, governmental, voluntary and academic sectors. CBERN also aims to support work from inception to dissemination, from graduate student research and fellowship opportunities to promoting the projects of established professionals.

For the web’s largest database of articles on the Ring of Fire mining camp, please go to: Ontario’s Ring of Fire Mineral Discovery

CASE STUDY

•This section presents the now-infamous case in light of the previous discussion of the Aboriginal context to mining in Ontario, and the importance of community consultation in advance of resource development.

On December 14th, 2009 the Ontario Ministry of Northern Development, Mines and Forestry (MNDMF) announced that an agreement had been finalized between the McGuinty Government and Platinex Inc. to settle the junior mineral exploration firm’s litigation against Ontario and the K.I. First Nation (see MNDMF, 2009). This agreement included a $5 million payment to Platinex upon the release of its mining claims in the K.I. traditional territory and the guarantee of a royalty of 2.5% of any future resource revenues from those lands.

The settlement officially ended a dispute that began nearly ten years earlier, exacerbated tensions between Aboriginal communities, the province, and the mining industry, cost millions in legal fees, billions in potential revenue, led to the jailing of six K.I. community members, and changed the lives of hundreds of others who call K.I. home. How did things go wrong in K.I.?

CBERN says RepublicOfMining.com is “The ultimate mining database”

October 13, 2011September 22, 2011

The Canadian Business Ethics Research Network (CBERN) aims to promote knowledge-sharing and partnerships within the field of business ethics and across private, governmental, voluntary and academic sectors. The ultimate mining database A new blog is fast becoming a go-to resource for professionals and academics involved in the mining and resource extraction industries. Republic of Mining‘s …